


Lift us from the dark

by hangingfire



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: AU, Domesticity, Epistolary, Established Relationship, Fix-It, Gen, Golden Years, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queer History, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Victorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:56:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27164191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hangingfire/pseuds/hangingfire
Summary: Remembering two retired sea captains, survivors of a disastrous expedition, who lived out their golden years on an idyllic Hertfordshire farm.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 19
Kudos: 37
Collections: Fall Fitzier Exchange





	Lift us from the dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sadsparties](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadsparties/gifts).



_Editor’s note: The following letter was found in the effects of Dr. Louisa Porter, a psychologist affiliated with the_ Institut für Sexualwissenschaft _. The letter is dated November 6, 1928 and was written by renowned botanical illustrator Mrs. Sarah Visram Porter, Dr. Porter’s grandmother._

Dear Louisa,

Thank you for the fascinating pamphlet from your Institute. You young people! I know you think you invented fornication and girls kissing girls and boys kissing boys. But my dear, there’s truly nothing new under the sun. You’ve asked me about the men in the tintype photograph in my study—the old man with the blackthorn cane holding hands with the tall man standing beside him. I reckon it’s time I wrote that story down.

I’ve told you how my mam’s family weren’t best pleased when she married my dad—he a Lascar sailor from Gujarat and away on this or that merchant vessel all the time—well, that was hard. Harder still when his ship sank with all hands when I was eleven—that would have been 1865. We left Woolwich then for her home town in Hertfordshire. Her father was no help, but my aunt knew of a gentleman in need of a resident housekeeper near Abbots Langley, who’d gladly take on a respectable sailor’s widow for the job and not say no to her having a child.

Turns out it weren’t only a gentleman—it was two gentlemen. Everyone called them the Captains—Royal Navy, retired to the country. They shared an old farmhouse on a pretty bit of land just outside of the town, and I found out later that Mr. James had come up not far from there as a boy, at Rose Hill. Their little farmhouse wasn’t so grand as that—it was just enough for the two of them and a little more, and mam and me had to share the attic room. There was a duck-pond in the garden, a half-dozen apple trees, blackberry brambles, lovely flowers that Mr. James grew. He was a bit over fifty, and Mr. Francis was nearly seventy.

The day we arrived it was Mr. James who met us. He was one of the tallest men I’d met at that point in my little life. Iron-grey hair, a face that mostly remembered being handsome, the kindest eyes. He greeted my mam as if she were an old friend and asked me if I’d like to see the ducks while he showed her the house. There were ducklings, and of course there’s not a eleven-year-old girl who’s lived who’d turn down a chance to see ducklings.

So I went into the garden and I sat in the grass by the pond to watch the little ones swim around after their mother, and suddenly a shadow fell across me and there was a man’s voice, rough and Irish and sounding like something that had been tumbled over rocks—”What d’you think you’re doing there, miss?”

I turned round to see this old man glowering at me. He’s leaning on a blackthorn stick and what stopped me still were his eyes—blue like the sea they were, but a cold sea full of ice floes, and I knew in my soul that this was a man who’s locked eyes with the Devil and told the Devil where he can go. I don’t mind telling you I was terrified. I started babbling—I didn’t mean no harm, sir, just looking at the ducks, and then I hear Mr. James calling, “Francis, that’s Mrs. Visram’s daughter you’re terrorising there.”

Mr. Francis—for that’s who it was—muttered something about having children about, and then he turned and walked away without another word, leaning heavily on his stick. I watched him go back up to the house, and saw Mr. James take his arm and there was something about it‚ like the way my mam used to lean in to my dad when he’d come home from the sea, like she was afraid he’d turn to mist in her arms. I’d never seen a man act that way before—certainly not to another man. Children do see, you know. Even if they can’t explain it.

We moved in and mam went to work. I went to the village school in the mornings and helped her with the chores and cooking in the afternoons. Most mornings we woke up to find Mr. James at his desk, writing away—his memoirs, he said. He’d be there in the afternoon when I got home, stop for supper, and then be back at it and still there when I went to bed at night. When he wasn’t writing, he was with Mr. Francis—hovering over him, very nearly. I got on with him from the first—he told me stories about the sights he saw in China and the Euphrates and Araby when he was a young lieutenant, and in the Crimea when he was captain of his own ship, and when he saw I was interested in books and drawing, he gave me things to read and talked about them after. I owe him for any cultivated brains I may have, and that’s the truth.

Mr. Francis was a different matter. He was gruff and hard to talk to and he seemed to live according to a different clock to the rest of the world. Some mornings he’d be still abed well past daybreak, other days we’d find him dressed and puttering around the garden having been up hours before sunrise. He was the kind of quiet that’s frightening because you think he’s judging every move you make or every word that comes out of your mouth. I’d see him looking at me with those icy eyes sometimes and I’d wonder what I was doing wrong.

Well, come the day, then—we’d been there some three months or so, and one day my mam’s called away to her sister. She didn’t want me to go with her—later I learned that my aunt had taken dreadfully ill and mam wanted to spare me the worst. Mr. James said it was no ordeal for me to stay with them and they’d keep an eye on me, so away she went and I was left with the Captains, who let me be. I was a sober little thing—I went to school and did my washing and looked after my own meals, and I could even cook a little for them and I only burnt the bread once.

Three nights she’d been away when a terrible storm blew in from the north after nightfall. I was hiding in bed, blankets up to my ears, and suddenly I heard the most awful cries. It scared me half to death and I was certain the Captains were being murdered by a highwayman or some such, and surely I was next. And then there was a banging on the door of the bedroom and I shrieked, but it was only Mr. James, white as a sheet.

“I’m so sorry, Sarah,” he said, “but I need your help. I’ve got to fetch the doctor, and I can’t leave Francis alone. Will you sit with him?”

“Me, sir?” I said. “But he doesn’t like me.”

Mr. James let out a surprised sort of laugh. “Oh, he’ll be distraught to learn you think that. No, he’s very fond of you, I promise—he just doesn’t show it. Please, Sarah—can you do this?”

I was too fond of Mr. James to say no to him, so I got out of bed and wrapped myself up and went downstairs after him.

Now here’s a thing. There were two bedrooms on the main floor of the farmhouse, and I knew one was Mr. James’s and one was Mr. Francis’s. I’d never been in either before—that was my mam’s job, to do the washing and air them out and clean and all the rest. I thought Mr. James was going to take me to Mr. Francis’s room, but that room was empty and dark and the bed unslept-in. Instead, in Mr. James’s own room in the bed was Mr. Francis, ghastly pale and trembling like he had a fever, and tears streaming down his face.

“James,” he said, and I’d never heard a man’s voice shake like that, “please don’t go.”

“I’ll be back in no time, Francis,” Mr. James said. “Sarah’s going to sit with you. I promise, you’ll scarcely know I’m gone.” He kissed Mr. Francis’s brow before throwing on a coat, pulling on his boots, and running out into the storm.

So there was I, alone with Mr. Francis, thunder roaring and lightning flashing and rain pelting against the windows, and I could just hear the poor man muttering to himself. I could only catch about one word in five, but I remember the names _Thomas_ and _Stanley_ and _John_ , the words _silence_ and _carnival_ , and another word that weren’t English—like something caught in the throat, beginning with a _T_ and ending with a sort of cough. There’d be a clap of thunder and he’d moan like he was dying, and you can imagine how affrighted I was, thinking, what’ll I do when Mr. James comes back and Mr. Francis is dead? I fell to my knees by the bedside and began praying, and suddenly I felt his hand on my hair and I looked up. Those eyes, those blue depthless eyes, for once nothing cold in them, only a sorrow as deep as the grief in my mam’s eyes when she’d learnt my father was gone.

“You’re a good girl,” he murmured.

All I could say was, “Mr. Francis, what’s the matter?”

“Haunted,” he said. “The shades of my men. Waiting for me. Nights like this I think they’ve come.”

A thunderclap shook the house and he cried out, and I took his hands between mine to comfort him and I started to say my paternoster. His hands were nearly as cold as the grave and shook terribly. When I got to “for Thine is the kingdom” I looked up and saw him steadier and he almost smiled. “You remind me of the priest’s daughter,” he said.

“Who, sir?” I asked, but then he was trembling again, and then in barged Mr. James and the village doctor and I ran out to make tea, for lack of aught else to do. And then I fell asleep waiting for the water to boil and woke the next morning in my own bed, tucked in as tenderly as if by my mam herself.

Whatever terrible thing Mr. James had thought was happening, it weren’t. That morning, the sun shone and the whole farm smelt of rain and green and growing things, and the Captains were pale and shaken, but sound again. I felt queer and ashamed in Mr. Francis’s presence, like I’d stumbled upon a secret, and after I put out some toast and tea for them, I went to sit by the pond.

Mr. James found me shortly. He sat down next to me, tossed a few crusts to the ducks, and said, “Francis and I can never repay you for what you did.”

“Weren’t nothing, sir,” I said. “I only stayed with him and prayed.”

“That was enough. More than,” Mr. James said. He was quiet for a moment. “Do you know what we were, before we came here?”

“Only what you’ve told me. You were in the Navy, explorers,” I said.

Mr. James laughed, though it weren’t the way you do when something’s funny. “We sailed to the Arctic, back in ’45. I’ve never told you those stories—they’re not fit for your gentle young ears. We were searching for the Northwest Passage—do you know what that is? Well, it doesn’t exist. A route from the north Atlantic to the north Pacific, and a God-damned fairy tale. The expedition leader was Sir John Franklin. Francis was his second. We hated each other at first—absolutely bloody loathed one another’s very presence. I thought Francis was a miserable, moody old bastard and he thought I was a braggart and a blowhard. We weren’t entirely wrong about each other, but we weren’t right either.”

The language shocked me, but he didn’t notice. I thought, I’m hearing something I shouldn’t, but it seemed like he needed to say it and besides I didn’t know how to stop him.

“The expedition was a disaster. By the time James Clark Ross found us, half the men were dead—including Sir John—and the rest of us were barely alive. Do you know about scurvy? Of course you do, you’re a sailor’s daughter—well, it nearly took all of us off. And our provisions were contaminated, absolutely poisonous—someday I’ll show you the paper _Erebus_ ’s assistant surgeon wrote about lead when he returned to Edinburgh. The entire expedition was a blight on the Discovery Service, in my opinion. Useless, deadly, so much grief. And yet—” He fell quiet and looked back at the house, and his face went gentle and strange.

“Is it wrong, do you think, to be grateful for such a thing? For such horrible things? It was a nightmare—worse than a nightmare, it was hell. And yet without that, Francis and I would have never—”

He stopped outright, like he recalled he was talking to an eleven-year-old girl. He picked up a pebble off the ground, rolled it in his fingers—he was always fidgeting with things—buttons and paperweights and napkin rings and chess pieces. He said, “Sometimes the memories get to be too much,” and I heard a trembling in his voice, and I went scarlet—I felt so young and unready, but he kept talking. “That’s what happened last night. The storm blew in, and with the noise and the lightning—it took him right back. I thought he was dying. His heart was racing and he was pale and sick—but it was just the memories. Just the memories.”

There was naught I could think of to say except, “I’m sorry, sir. For everything you went through. I didn’t know.”

“No reason you should know,” said Mr. James, kindly and sad, and he smiled a little. “Nevertheless, Sarah—thank you.”

He got up and went inside then, and I felt too embarrassed to stay, though I couldn’t have told you why. I went wandering away in the yard and tried to lose myself amid the apple trees, to make sense of my thoughts.

I looked back a little later and saw them in the garden. They didn’t see me, or they’d forgot me, walking arm in arm, and that’s when the scales fell from my eyes. I saw how they leaned toward each other, how close they were. Tender as a couple of courting sweethearts, for all that they were old men who’d lived through a hell that I couldn’t imagine. They stopped by the pond and Mr. James kissed Mr. Francis, right there, like a husband and wife. I supposed I ought to have been horrified, but no—it made my heart hurt, and yet I felt a kind of joy, because who could feel anything but that when you saw the love in their faces?

I never said what I saw, and they never spoke of that night to me after. When my mam returned a few days later I didn’t tell her and I don’t think they said anything either. But Mr. Francis was warmer toward me after that—he’d tell me stories of his own and even joke with me a little, and sometimes Mr. James would give me a secret sort of smile, like he knew what I knew. A few years later, his memoir was published and I read it and then I understood everything he didn’t tell me that day, everything that was in Mr. Francis’s eyes, and the ties that bound them, stronger and deeper than marriage vows.

They were good to me and my mam. We grew to love them like they were our own kinsmen, and after I was grown and gone she stayed with them until the end. At least once a year I still go back to Abbots Langley to leave them flowers in the churchyard at St. Lawrence. And you ought to read that memoir— _The Life and Times of Captain James Fitzjames_. Mr. James had a fine way with words, and livelier tales you’ll never read, I promise you.

I hope this story helps your work somehow. But more than that I hope you find yourself a man—or a lady—who looks at you the way the Captains looked at each other. There’s no greater blessing on Earth or in Heaven.

Your terrible and loving nana,

Sarah

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Erland Cooper's song "[First of the Tide](https://genius.com/Erland-cooper-first-of-the-tide-lyrics)", from the album [_Sule Skerry_](https://erlandcooper.bandcamp.com/album/sule-skerry). You can read up on the _Institut für Sexualwissenschaft_ [here](https://www.teenvogue.com/story/lgbtq-institute-in-germany-was-burned-down-by-nazis), for starters; the loss of this research organization constituted an enormous blow to LGBTQ+ history and research. Inspiration also came from [these photographs](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2020/oct/16/men-in-love-from-the-1850s-nini-treadwell-in-pictures), which show, as our narrator puts it, that there is indeed nothing new under the sun. 
> 
> Thanks to: [sadsparties](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadsparties) for their "Fitzier in their golden years" prompt, which gave me the excuse to write this fix-it indulgence, and to [chillydown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chillydown/) for the beta-read. And cheers to all of my fellow Terrorholics who are still having enormous feelings about this show after two-and-a-half years.


End file.
